Centrists

When I got traded in December of ’96 to the Angels, I was working out at the Yankees complex in Tampa when it all went down.

I remember walking into Mr. Steinbrenner’s office and thanking him for everything, but the one thing that really sticks out in my mind is that he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t like, "Get out of here; you’ve been traded now."

The first thing he said to me was, "You’re always welcome here for what you’ve done for this organization. I don’t let too many guys that play for other teams come in and use this complex to work out, but you’re welcome here any time."

After I hit the home run in ’96 and we turned that whole thing around, just him making that comment was big. Because there was first that fear of not being part of the Yankees after what had just happened, and then him giving me that comfort thing of "you will always be a Yankee, no matter what."

Once I got traded, I thought, "I’m not going to be welcome anymore."

The way he made me feel, calling me in the office and saying, "You can work out here, and our home is your home, and you will always be a part of the Yankees organization for what you’ve done for us."

And really, that’s the man he was. I compare him a lot to my father, a hard-driving man who expected you to give your best every day.

Leyritz, a Yankee from 1990-96 and 1999-2000, hit a three-run, eighth-inning home run in Game 4 of the ’96 World Series that generally is credited with being the turning point in a comeback series victory against the Braves that ignited a stretch of four Yankees titles in five seasons.

— As told to Bob Hille

1973: 80-82 (fourth in A.L. East)
1974: 89-73 (second in A.L. East)
1975: 83-77 (third in A.L. East)
1976: 97-62 (first in A.L. East) **
1977: 100-62 (first in A.L. East) *
1978: 100-63 (first in A.L. East) *
1979: 89-71 (fourth in A.L. East)
1980: 103-59 (first in A.L. East) *
1981: 59-48 (fourth in A.L. East) **
1982: 79-83 (fifth in A.L. East)
1983: 91-71 (third in A.L. East)
1984: 87-75 (third in A.L. East)
1985: 97-64 (second in A.L. East)
1986: 90-72 (second in A.L. East)
1987: 89-73 (fourth in A.L. East)
1988: 85-76 (fifth in A.L. East)
1989: 74-87 (fifth in A.L. East)
1990: 67-95 (last in A.L. East)
1991: 71-91 (fifth in A.L. East)
1992: 76-86 (fourth in A.L. East)
1993: 88-74 (second in A.L. East)
1994: 70-43 (first in A.L. East) ***
1995: 79-65 (second in A.L. East; won A.L. wild card)
1996: 92-70 (first in A.L. East) *
1997: 96-66 (second in A.L. East; won A.L. wild card)
1998: 114-48 (first in A.L. East) *
1999: 98-64 (first in A.L. East) *
2000: 87-74 (first in A.L. East) *
2001: 95-65 (first in A.L. East) **
2002: 103-58 (first in A.L. East)
2003: 101-61 (first in A.L. East) **
2004: 101-61 (first in A.L. East)
2005: 95-67 (first in A.L. East)
2006: 97-65 (first in A.L. East)
2007: 94-68 (second in A.L. East; won A.L. wild card)
2008: 89-73 (third in A.L. East)
2009: 103-59 (first in A.L. East) *
2010: 56-32 (first in A.L. East at All-Star break)

* Won the World Series
** Lost the World Series
*** No postseason because of work stoppage

Since George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees in 1973, no other franchise can match the success of the team in pinstripes.

Since the 1973 season:

Regular-season wins

Postseason wins

World Series championships

Pennants

There are things that most people don’t know about George Steinbrenner. He’s been very generous in supporting charities. I know that a soup kitchen burned down in New York not too far from the stadium, and nobody knew about it. I found out that he sent a big check to them and put them back in business. He was good for baseball. He put together the best teams in baseball, he bought the best team in baseball, and they have it right now.

I didn’t know him real well. I was voted Pride of the Yankees one year, and he made the presentation to me on opening day. That was the first time I met him. He and Yogi (Berra) were walking in the tunnel at Yankee Stadium, down to the clubhouse, and Yogi said, "Hey Rich, you know George Steinbrenner?" And I said, "No, why don’t you introduce me?" And he goes, "Well, this is him." That was my introduction to him, and we just greeted each other. I met him a couple other times, and we always had friendly conversation.

His best friend was my best friend. Clyde King and I had been super-close friends for all these years, and Clyde was sort of his right hand. The stories that I’d hear were always so positive because Clyde thought the world of him, and George really took good care of Clyde and his family. Everything I knew about him was always so good.

Richardson, an eight-time Yankee All-Star second baseman, was MVP of the 1960 World Series.

— As told to Ryan Fagan

Joba_62 (Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain) We all suffered a huge loss today! Mr. Steinbrenner was a great man, great owner, that did so many amazing things. You will truly be missed!

Adam_Schefter (ESPN reporter) RIP, George Steinbrenner. Bob Sheppard already is there to announce your arrival.

darrenrovell1 (CNBC sports business reporter) Money George Steinbrenner spent on the Yanks payroll since 2000: $1.87 BILLION

DickieV (ESPN basketball analyst Dick Vitale) George Steinbrenner was one of the most giving n generous person I ever met-he had a special fire in his belly to win n a Big HEART! RIP!

SI_JonHeyman (Sports Illustrated baseball writer) biggest memory of george was his return march 1, 1993, in ft. lauderdale. he was in all his glory. seems like yesterday.

KenDavidoff (Newsday baseball writer) George dominated my life, as a #Yankees reporter. When my wife called to say we were expecting, I was chasing him down a corridor in Tampa.

MrHoratioSanz (comedian) I wonder if Steinbrenner is already asking Jesus to shave and get a haircut.

michaelianblack (actor/comedian) Somewhere in heaven, Billy Martin just got fired. RIP George Steinbrenner.

LATimesfarmer (L.A. Times NFL columnist Sam Farmer) Al Davis to @MikeVacc: "I look at what my friend George has done with the Yankees and I’ve always said, ‘That’s how it should be done.’"

OHnewsroom (Overheard in the Newsroom) Associate Producer: "Do you know who George Steinbrenner is?" Producer: "Of course. I watched Seinfeld."

pgammo (Hall of Fame baseball writer Peter Gammons) The Boss began with Horace Clarke and died World Champion. He made his fellow owners a lot of money, and was very kind to many of us.

KingJames (Heat guard/Yankees fan LeBron James) R.I.P George Steinbrenner The Great. U will be missed dearly

sportswatch (Newsday media columnist Neil Best) Time travelers from 1990, when Yankee Stadium cheered Steinbrenner’s ban from baseball, would find today’s (deserved) accolades very odd.

TheMontyShow (Sporting News Radio host Tim Montemayor) I love the way Steinbrenner ran the Yankees, he made deals to put money and players in, never take them out…how many teams can say that?

chucktodd (NBC political reporter) R.I.P. George; He was good for the Yankees; but the debate about whether what’s good for the Yankees is good for the game is a real debate.

I was a player with the White Sox on the last day of spring training in ’77, getting ready to go to Toronto to open up their franchise.

The phone rang—I was putting a box in the car—and I ran back in and answered the phone. I heard this crowd in the background and this voice, and it says, "Bucky Dent?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "This is George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees." And I went, "Get outta here!"

"No," he says, "this is George Steinbrenner," and he says, "I have a deal that will bring you to New York as a player if you’ll agree to a contract."

It took me about five minutes.

Nick Buoniconti was my agent at the time; I told Mr. Steinbrenner, "I’ll call you right back." I hung up and called Nick, and he called, and five minutes later they called back and said I was a Yankee.

That was a very special moment, one that I’ll always remember. Unbelievable.

Mr. Steinbrenner was a tremendous competitor, a guy that demanded excellence from you. You knew the bottom line when you were going to be a Yankee back then. The bottom line was you’re coming in there, and you’re going to win.

He was going to let you know about it if you didn’t play the way he wanted you to play.

Dent, an All-Star Yankees shortstop, was the 1978 World Series MVP.

— As told to Bob Hille

ANAHEIM, Calif. — For all he did as a baseball owner, George Steinbrenner’s greatest legacy was leaving the Yankees in far better shape than when he bought them.

He wouldn’t want it any other way.

George Steinbrenner’s $8.7 million investment in the 1970s paid off well.

Steinbrenner died early Tuesday at the age of 80 as the most famous owner in American sports history. He was famous for his firings. His willingness to pay top dollar has made mega-millionaires of countless players. He also was known for his charity donations.

But most of all, he did his job better than the rest. He bought the Yankees for $8.7 million in 1973, according to a Yankees release. When Forbes again ranked the Yankees the No. 1 baseball franchise earlier this year, their value was estimated at $1.6 billion (the Dallas Cowboys are No. 1 at $1.65 billion). Under Steinbrenner, the Yankees won seven World Series and 11 pennants, moved into a new palace of a ballpark and launched their own television network.

Steinbrenner created his share of adversaries along the way because of his my-way-or-the-highway methods. Those who remembered him Tuesday — and reactions came from across the land — did so with respect and considerable admiration.

Said White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf in his statement: "George Steinbrenner was too complex a person to adequately describe in a short statement, but he was a great friend of mine and he will be missed. His impact on the game cannot be denied."

The key to Steinbrenner’s success was simple: Get the best players.

"He was the first owner who paid huge sums of money to players and he was very successful at it," says Tommy John, who signed a four-year, $1.4 million deal before the 1979 season. "He paid very, very well and expected you to play very, very well. He was very, very tough to work for but he was very fair. He expected a hard day’s work for a good dollar."

The Yankees made headlines in 1975 when they signed Catfish Hunter for $3.35 million over five years, and they won the World Series in 1977 and 1978. Before the 2008 season, they signed CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett for more than $420 million, and they won the World Series in 2009.

"All the guys in baseball making any money should go to the funeral because George is directly responsible for their salaries," John said.

Steinbrenner’s death on the morning of the All-Star Game allowed the baseball world an All-Star send-off of sorts for the Yankees owner. Two press conferences were held before the game — one for Joe Girardi, Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez, and another for one of the greatest Yankees, Derek Jeter. All have been made rich by Steinbrenner, and all have helped deliver the Yankees at least one World Series ring.

"He’s more than just an owner to me. He’s a friend of mine," said Jeter, who like Steinbrenner, has a home in Tampa, Fla., and talked about visiting his boss during the offseason.

Rodriguez talked about his first meeting with The Boss and how, "Within the first two minutes he said the words, ‘We have to win a world championship’ about three or four times, so really quickly I got a good idea of what his front and center thoughts were."

Pettitte remembered being a young minor leaguer who would be in awe — and a little scared — whenever Steinbrenner showed up at Yankees’ rookie-league games. "He was always down there and I was a 19-year-old kid at the time, and it was looking at him like, That’s The Boss walking by."

In a radio interview, Dwight Gooden talked about his first meeting with Steinbrenner in 1996. The Yankees were interested in giving Gooden a comeback opportunity so Steinbrenner met Gooden for lunch and for two hours, Gooden said, never talked about baseball. After Gooden signed and started 0-3, however, he and his wife at the time were passing Steinbrenner after a game. Gooden introduced his wife to the owner, who replied, "When are you going to win a (bleeping) game?"

That was the Steinbrenner that made headlines for changing managers 21 times and general managers more than a dozen times. Girardi went out of his way to talk about another side of Steinbrenner — the one that John said regularly and without fanfare paid for children’s surgeries in New York.

"One of the things that is not talked enough about Mr. Steinbrenner is how giving of a man he is," Girardi said. "A man that really cared about people and tried to change people’s lives; whether it was a first chance, a second chance or a third chance. That’s who he really was."

Yankees critics, of course, tend to remember Steinbrenner as the man who bought championships and, as a result, is partly responsible for sports becoming a mega-business. His critics still howl over the unfairness of it all. Often you loved him or you hated him, depending on how you thought about the Yankees.

But even those who didn’t like his ways have to admit Steinbrenner cared about his job. Which is why, as he leaves, the Yankees are the biggest winners in our sports world.

Stan McNeal is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at smcneal@sportingnews.com.

Everybody knew the job description and the accountability factor with George, and the mark that he left on me was that you know it’s your job description, you’re accountable for what you’re supposed to be doing there, and nobody wants to hear you complain about it.

I spent 19 years in that organization and basically grew up in it. My whole baseball education, for the most part professionally was under Mr. Steinbrenner’s tutelage.

I think Billy Martin allowed me to have a grip on, "A lot of guys would love to have an owner as in tuned to winning as Mr. Steinbrenner." And he made everybody accountable.

You know, they talk about great golf courses are run by dictators because you don’t have to go through 55 committees to get something done. One of the great things was we knew we had to please one person, OK? Him and the fans, and he told us that many times.

But there were some great moments, being on his farm in Ocala with him and his children and seeing him in that light.

I was one of the managers he never fired. I resigned because he wanted to get rid of my coaches. He knew where people’s buttons were, and mine were loyalty to my coaches.

I remember him coming back to my house after the whole thing, trying to get me to come back. As I got older and he got older there was really respect for what each had tried to accomplish.

Showalter managed Steinbrenner’s Yankees from 1992-95.

— As told to Bob Hille

Coming up with five memorable moments from a two-hour, 30-some minute event featuring some of baseball’s best hitters shouldn’t be this difficult. But perhaps that says something about the event, or the length of it anyway. As far as home run derbies go, this one had way more homers (95 total) than memorable moments. Here goes:

David Ortiz and Hanley Ramirez were rooting for each other in the Home Run Derby final.

1. The winner. David Ortiz is smiling again. And if he starts slowly next year, maybe he will be cut some slack and the smile won’t disappear. The way he bombed those majestic big flies into the right-field seats, the life in Ortiz’s bat is not likely to run out anytime soon. He hit eight, 13 and 11 homers to finish with six more than runner-up Hanley Ramirez. Not bad for a man who, at 34, is old enough for Ramirez to say he’s "like my dad." In a respectful way, of course. Ortiz looked out for his younger countryman when Ramirez was coming up in the Red Sox’s system. Ramirez went so far to admit that Ortiz was rooting for Ramirez to win the derby. "Like I was rooting for him," Ramirez said.

2. The runner-up. For a guy who admitted he was concerned about what entering the derby could do to his swing, Ramirez put on an impressive showing. While Ortiz launched his homers, Ramirez’s were more like line drives drilled over the fence. So why did he decide to enter? "My teammates kept saying why aren’t you doing it, why aren’t you doing it." And will it affect his swing? "I will hit more (homers) now," he said, smiling before adding, "I don’t think so. I know what kind of hitter I am. "

3. On the field. Matt Holliday didn’t make it out of the first round but he did hit the longest homer of the night, 497 feet. He also showed about as much emotion as he does during regular-season games when he slapped his bat after making his final out. With one out left, Holliday had only one homer but then he cranked four straight to make things interesting. He ended up two homers short of moving on.

4. On the sideline. First-time All Star and derby entrant Chris Young didn’t exactly join the ranks of notable sluggers by hitting only one homer, made doubly embarrassing because he had to go first. But give the young Diamondbacks center fielder credit for respecting those who came before him. Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson and Frank Robinson were about to walk off the field after finishing an on-field interview when Young stopped them and asked them to pose for a photograph with him. "I had the opportunity and I went for it," Young said. "I’m framing that one, for sure."

5. In the press box. What better way to promote a movie than bring one of the stars into a press box full of folks looking for a break from watching the derby? Especially when that star is funnyman Will Ferrell? And there he was, appearing on behalf of his upcoming film "The Other Guys" (August 6), wiping sweat from his brow and trying to be quick-witted while squeezed in a room full of media hoping for a mini-monologue. His sports jacket was kind of funny, with an authentic Bobby Grich patch on the front (Ferrell grew up an Angels fan). He had at least one good line. Asked what his home run call would be if he were an announcer, Ferrell replied something like: "It’s back … to the wall. Check your watches (voice rising), it’s home run o’clock." OK, not his funniest one-liner ever but impressive without any notice.

Stan McNeal is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at smcneal@sportingnews.com.